Hardware stores, office supply stores, and the like, typically offer customers signage that provides an observer with text or directional information or symbols, such as an arrow shaped symbol, guiding one towards a particular location, event, or destination. For example, the Hillman Sign Center of Cincinnati, Ohio, offers a directional sign with text, such as “garage sale” and the arrow shaped symbol printed on a sign's surface. The directional sign has a perimeter shape of a rectangle and not that of the directional shape of an arrow. Consequently, even from a front facing side, the arrow's direction is less discernable from certain distances and less effective than, say, a particular directional sign with a discernable arrow-shaped perimeter.
Office Depot, Inc. and its retail outlets also offer a rectangular shaped sign with a directional arrow symbol printed on the sign's surface as part of a sign kit package. This sign kit package includes four individual signs made of plastic, measuring 11 inch by 14 inch. Similar to Hillman Sign Center's art above, each sign has a perimeter that is shaped as a rectangle. The sign kit package comes with two signs that have pre-printed arrow symbols pointed to the right and the remaining two signs with the arrow symbols pointed to the left. The shaped sign(s) come with indicia, such as “garage sale.” Similar to the sign provided by the Hillman Sign Center, the perimeter of the sign is of a rectangular shape. The preprinted directional arrow is only printed on one side of the sign with the text. Because of the rectangular perimeter of the Office Depot signs, the visibility of the direction being conveyed and the variety of uses of the signs may be limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,176,485 describes a directional sign for providing observers with directional information to a particular location. A generally rectangular shaped sign has an arrow indicator secured to the rear of the sign. The arrow indicator can be concealed for packaging or storage purposes and can also be pivoted and extended from behind the rectangular shape in one of the three (right, left, and up) preset directions desired, thus allowing some flexibility. However, this directional sign may relatively be expensive and may only provide the person with a single sign to use. The sign may further require assembly, additional parts, and tools, to setup for display. Further, the design in the '485 patent creates an unconventional navigation shape, which is an arrowhead protruding from a rectangle. The directional message conveyed by this design may not be as clear as the directional message conveyed by a simple traditional arrow symbol.
With the foregoing in mind, it is an object of the present invention to satisfy the need for a relatively simple, efficiently packaged, or inexpensive directional sign which may be used by a person, such as a homeowner or an individual conducting an event, to convey directional information to an observer to travel along a pathway or to locate an event. It is another object of the invention to provide the directional sign with a much discernable directional perimeter shape.